Belshazzar's Daughter

Barbara Nadel’s gripping Ikmen mysteries are the inspiration behind The Turkish Detective, BBC Two’s sensational eight-part TV crime drama series available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

Barbara Nadel introduces Inspector Cetin Ikmen for the first time in her debut novel, Belshazzar’s Daughter. The Ikmen mysteries have been highly praised:

‘İkmen is one of modern crime fiction’s true heroes, complex yet likeable, and the city he inhabits – Istanbul – is just as fascinating’ The Times

‘Barbara Nadel’s distinctive Istanbul-set Inspector İkmen thrillers combine brightly coloured scene setting with deliciously tortuous plots‘ Guardian

A secret worth killing for…

Leonid Meyer is found murdered in his flat in Balat, Istanbul’s decrepit Jewish quarter, a swastika daubed on the wall in the old man’s blood. But Inspector Cetin Ikmen is quick to eschew the obvious conclusion that this is a racist attack. The evidence leads Ikmen and his young lieutenant, Suleyman, to two people: Robert Cornelius, a teacher observed outside Meyer’s flat shortly after the murder, and a retired businessman, Reinhold Smits, known to have had Nazi sympathies. But another link connects these two: a ninety-year-old Russian émigré, Maria Gulcu, a widow who thinks she possesses a secret worth killing for…

What readers are saying about Belshazzar’s Daughter:

‘An engaging, fascinating picture of life in Turkey. Wonderful characters and a deep plot that constantly draws one to read on’

‘An excellent murder mystery set in the twilight world of old aristocracies in modern day Istanbul’

‘An intense psychological drama with an impressive array of characters and colourful descriptions of the less salubrious areas of Istanbul. Nadel successfully evokes the hot sultry atmosphere of modern Turkey’